For the record, and once and for all, American democracy doesn't need paper trails! American democracy needs paper ballots! Can we at least get that much straight by now?!

If you don't believe me, just wait until your first high-profile challenged election occurs on touch-screen voting machines which use paper trails instead of a paper ballots. (You may not need to wait very long.) Just watch and see how much confidence those paper trails will offer skeptics during the challenge.

Beyond that, did we mention how lame the editorial was? It would have been a great piece had this been October 2004 instead of October 2006!

And they actually pay people to write those columns in the Washington Post? While we have to beg for donations??? (Speaking of which...we haven't done so in a long time, so please feel free to drop something in our tip jar if you can! We could use it. And we'll endeavor to not be lame in return.)

I wonder how much Republican voter fraud and intimidation is going on right now in preparation for their wholesale theft of elections in November. One thing is for sure, we aren't going to hear about it from corporate media.

"VVPAT" "Paper Trails" are useless scams created by the e-voting machine companies to fool those --- like you --- who are not paying attention.

Not a single election in the US has been
sucessfully audited or recounted using
"VVPATs"... they are virtually impossible
to handle or read, are the opposite of a permanent
record, and having a complete set of them for any
single election has never happened as far as I know.
Look at primaries in Texas and in Illinois/Chicago area for 2006 examples of this.

Your heart's in the right place, but your soft, naive, asleep at the wheel information is damaging to democracy.

We need a permanent record of each actual voter's marks for their choices in elections --- records that may be handled as many times as necessary to either recount or audit elections.

By the way...this "2% solution" concept for audits is also bogus.

I urge you to really do your homework on voting issues, become really informed, and then write an editorial that has some reportorial and logical authenticity to it.

Sorry,
But this is an effort to communicate with Brad. There is a discussion going on over at KOS about having a plan in place for the irregularities we know will happen in Nov.

This seems like the obvious website to establish it and manage it. Could be develop a fund for that purpose? Could we get someone savy to manage it? That would be to establish a database of resources by district, so that we know the lawyers to call, that we have people to analyze results and that we can respond to potential fraud quickly and effectively.

I've been reading this thread pretty much since it's inception and I'm glad its here. I've been quiet for the time because I expected that by now someone would start making sense of all this ... yet no one has. It is not a question of E-voting vs. Paper or machine or any other device. All can be hacked. All can be manipulated. E-voting is the future. We do not need paper trails or paper ballots. What is needed is a shift in the current paradigm, that is to say, the votes must belong to the public domain; recording and tabulation systems need to be Open sourced. The only proprietary piece of the process is the presentation software. The storage of the vote must be a common (XML) format publically viewable record. The tabulation should be done, not by one firm, and certainly not by the same firm that presents the ballot, but by many independent auditors.
The transfer of actual votes should be done in real time and stored across many servers run by a public consortium. The paper reciept would allow a voter to check his record against the public record of his vote. Only in this way can a voter be convinced that how they voted is what was tabulated. Even with a paper ballot in your hand today, voters don't know if their vote was tabulated. There has never been proof anybody's votes have ever been counted correctly, full recounts notwithstanding; tampering is hidden or kept quiet. EJDionne is right, a paper trail is of more value than a paper ballot; he just doesn't know what makes it valuable, and that is the Open sourced system of indenpendent recording, storing, transmitting and tabulating that any good college CIS or CSI student would propose.

The only thing the criminals in the Republican party can do is blame the dems for 1 of their homo repugnant republifascists being exposed for "trying to entice young boyzz" hee uh hee huh.

Don't talk about the fact that U orchestrated 911 with 3 buildings going down controlled demolition and a military that coincidently stood down as well as 100 other holes in the 911 conspiracy story. www.911truthout.com

Don't talk about all the anti-environmental bill passed under a deceptive heading in favor of increasing pollution, selling our western wild lands, gutting the Federal Environmental Species Protection act or any of the other over 200 environmental laws reversed under your control.

Don't talk about the Patriot Act, Homeland Security Act, the totally Fascist Suspected Terrorist Act, or any of the Executive Orders Bush attached to all the laws he signed so far so he is not accountable by them or absolving him from his actions. TOTALLY UNCONSTITUTION.

Don't talk about the last rigged elections which utilized massive humanistic fraud and of course electronic voting machine fraud. Don't talk about the fact that another US election is coming up without paper ballot trails to evidence the actual winner because we stupid American trust whatever you tell the corporate mass media to say and do not require any proof.

But Noooooooooo! The murderous criminals in the Bushit administration will blame the majority of Democratic enabler robots for outing a child porn Senator for doing the only thing this despicable American political party knows how to do. F*cking lie and work towards Armegedon by destroying the environment which born you and causing world caose with bombs and wars, and an ability to not get along with other world powers as the biggest losers to ever run this country in modern or ALL TIME.

If you want help writing IMIGRATION LEGISLATION why don't you go ask American Indians for some pointers.
Imbreed Loser GREEDY Rusters.

I'm glad I sent Kucinich five hundred dollars in 2004!
There's no reason in hell why we should only recount an election when the machines can't manage to steal enough votes to make a recount lawful. It IS in fact, INSANE!

I would absolutely under NO conditions centralize the planning for November 8 at DailyKOS. That site was totally opposed to discussion of election fraud in 2004 and is a sell-out on the issue --- it should be ignored and abandoned. I don't trust them now because they acted like scum then, and while some people can "come around" they can also PRETEND to come around with the intention of turning out to be scum again. KOS can't be trusted on this issue, at least not until a MAJOR apology and recanting of previous statement and behaviour.

I agree that November 8 is probably the second most important day in the future of our Democracy, only just behind November 7 --- the day when we put as many votes as humanly possible into the "D" category and make it really, really, really hard for the Republicans to steal too many seats.

I'm not sure we should centralize organization for it, as that would make it too easy to subvert or disrupt. Imagine all your planning and coordination and tools and communications are running through one site and on November 7 at 5 p.m. that site "disappears" from the internet. (It's not hard --- just a few quick changes in the root DNS tables under Federal Order or gunpoint or trickery.)

Rather, each state and perhaps even each congressional district should have plans for how they are going to handle vote count fraud and electoral mis-conduct on November 8 and how they are going to prevent Republicans from flying their slim-lead cheaters to Washington and swearing them in (as tested in the CA-50) before the counting is finished.

This is going to get VERY ugly. We better start planning for it. In fact, we should start planning for it about 9 months ago. Too bad we have 29 days.

In a debate here, congressman Chris Cannon said he thinks the Dieblod voting machines are fine because they have the paper trail which you can look at to make sure the person you voted for got counted, and if there's a problem, it's "easy" to use the paper trail to verify the election.

Marcos has been going around the country saying he thinks we won't be able to win until 2010 because we don't have a message that resonates like Karl Rove's does. He also thinks Bush won the election in 2004!

The antidote is to take these retards out of the gene pool permanently. Like that Senator from Arizona which claim Global Warming Climate Change is a hoax.

At my 24 hour Fitness gym which has been taken over the last year by a massive corporate sign campaign within the workout area, recently placed huge signs around the gym area THE BIGGEST LOSER.

i can't figure out if the BIGGEST LOSERS ARE THE BUSHIT ADMINISTRATION or an AMERICAN PEOPLE that feels compelled to IGNORE or COMPLICENTLY go along AS THESE LYING GREEDY FCKS MISMANAGE EVERY ASPECT OF OUR NATION IN AN EFFORT TO GRAB EVEN MORE POWER THAN THE FOUNDING FATHERS EVER INTENDED PUBLIC OFFICE HOLDERS HARNESS. These LYING WARMONGERING DESTRUCTORS WILL NOT CONTINUE TO HIJACK OUR GOVERNMENT BECAUSE I'M GONNA STOP THEM.

#6 Sean: Does what you are suggesting violate the secrecy of the ballot? Not that I personally wouldn't be willing to give that up for verification purposes, but most people seem to think the secret ballot thing is a big deal.

#16 unfckingbelievable that you can call a non profit organization trying to save the earth and earth species as well as humans from the demise of big oil companies, mining and timber developers the enemy. Our formerly public forests and wild lands that were to be protected are now in crisis of their total destruction in the image of the greed of these criminals mismanaging our land and resources.

These disgusting human beings who claim to be of the cross. If i could ever get the likes of Pat Roberts or Inhofe in a ring i would destroy them with my hands but i would make them be see the light in a moment of rebirth to the point that they recant their anti-scientific lies they spread to their moronic followers like the worst disease ever known to man.

One that lacks any rational thought so out of touch with nature like the most pathetic coccaroach overpopulating and inhabiting this planet after these bastards destroy it in the name of their GOD.

These people are the ugliest humans on earth as well as part of the Biggest Loser party controlling America. May they die a cruel and inhumane death.

Philip Wright (#4) - At VelvetRevolution.us we have been organizing quite a few programs along these lines for some time as part of our VR Election Protection Strike Force. In addition to organizing several such programs on our own, including legal efforts, poll watching efforts, a $250,000 reward for E-Vote fraud whistleblowers, a media campaign, we're working with a number of other orgs to try and help everyone work in tandem here. More on all of that soon. Of course, we'd welcome the Kossacks to join the effort!

Charlie L (#9) - Don't blame the Kossacks, blame Kos himself. He's the one who purged all of those users and diaries after '04 if they dared discuss election fraud. It's an outrage, was *exceedingly* damaging to the Electoral Integrity movement, and Markos has some explaining to do for it, in my opinion. But I wouldn't blame the people of Kos.

Sean Zitello (#6) - I disagree with your notion that "E-Voting is the future". I don't have time for a discussion of why that is at the moment, other than to say, taking "receipts" home is a *very* bad idea (heard of vote buying?) but I'd be happy to see Open Source *if* a voting machine must be used in any way. The networking you discussed is a horribly dangerous idea as well. For loads of reasons that I can't chat about right now. Glad to see you here, however, and hope you'll not be a stranger.

So Dionne recognizes the perils and prescribes a hope-based election for this November (seeing as how the clock has been run out) and efforts after that to straighten things out for the next time??? I never cease to be astounded by just how dense some people can be...

# 15 Brock.
No. It doesn't violate secrecy because the receipt is my own record of my own vote, and I need not share it with anyone, though I have no doubt polling organizations would love to collect them. You bring up a good point and that is do I have a right to have a record of my votes?
# 18 Brad. You are surely skeptical of computers. And how then sir, am I to believe that the words I read are in fact the words you wrote. This forum is based on both trust and verification; that is to say I can come back here and check that you didn't a add couple words here or there to alter my intent. Secure networks can in fact be secured, our entire financial system is run on secure networks. Will we need adequate safeguards? Yes, but these can at least be evaluated by intelligent people.
I don't see how my having a record of my vote equates to vote buying, unless you are suggesting that the "buyers" will pay for the receipts as proof of voting for the buyers candidate. Fair enough. It could well be abused.
The key is not so much the mechanism as it is the need to verify that how I voted is what was ultimately counted. There are other ways, I am open to well considered options.